Dervish of Dawn

Although the dawn goddess is seen mainly as a goddess of healing and redemption in most parts of the world, her stern, evil-smiting element is more common in some areas. Many of her disciples from these lands become dervishes of dawn, religious mystics who use a spinning dance as part of their worship. Many bards of her faith hone their skills with dance and scimitar to become dervish dancers, but some tread a similar path focused more on magic and healing than swordplay. These are the dervishes of dawn.

A dervish of dawn has the following class features.

Weapon and Armor Proficiency

Dervishes of dawn gain weapon proficiency with the scimitar. This ability replaces their proficiency with the rapier and whip.

Deity

Dervishes of dawn must be a worshiper the goddess of dawn. A dervish who abandons or betrays this faith reverts to a standard bard.

Battle Dance

Dervishes of dawn are trained in the use of the Perform skill, especially dance, to create magical effects on himself. This works like bardic performance, except that the performances grant double their normal bonuses, but these bonuses only affect him. He does not need to be able to see or hear his own performance. Battle dancing is treated as bardic performance for the purposes of feats, abilities, and effects that affect bardic performance, except that battle dancing does not benefit from the Lingering Performance feat or any other ability that allows a bardic performance to grant bonuses after it has ended. The benefits of battle dancing apply only when the bard is wearing light or no armor. Like bardic performance, battle dancing cannot be maintained at the same time as other performance abilities.

Starting a battle dance is a move action, but it can be maintained each round as a free action. Changing a battle dance from one effect to another requires the dervish to stop the previous performance and start the new one as a move action. Like a bard, a dervish of dawn’s performance ends immediately if he is killed, paralyzed, stunned, knocked unconscious, or otherwise prevented from taking a free action each round. A dervish of dawn cannot perform more than one battle dance at a time.

Spinning Spellcaster (Ex)

Meditative Whirl (Ex)

At 8th level, when using battle dance, the dervish of dawn can enter a trance-like state where his spinning motion represents the movement of the planets around the sun, and his spirit is attuned to the healing aspects of his goddess.

By spending a move action focusing on his whirling, the dervish can apply the Quicken Spell feat to any cure spell he is about to cast (effectively spending a move action and swift action to cast the spell). This does not alter the level of the spell or the casting time. The dervish can use this ability once per day at 8th level and one additional time per day for every two dervish levels he has beyond 8th.